As reliance upon computers become increasingly more commonplace, it is common for computer users to have data and information stored on more than one computer system. For example, it is very common for a user to have a work machine, a laptop, and a home machine. Moreover, many users today employ handheld devices such as personal data assistants and smart phones, which also have data storage capacity.
Conventional desktop user interfaces (UIs) are designed to manage the content of a single machine. In accordance thereto, efforts have been taken to develop a variety of“file synchronization” utilities that assist users in moving their data back and forth between multiple machines and file systems. However, these “file synchronization” utilities do not integrate well with the primary file management UI.
Computer systems which support network-accessible folders allow user to retrieve items from remote machines. However, these limited systems require the user to view remote files as a separate area of the file system. In other words, today, a user cannot easily view and/or search content of a specified group of computers. Modern search systems exist for searching a local machine or for searching the entire Internet, but tools and/or utilities do not exist to allow an end-user to search across a specific set of computers and/or file systems.
What is needed is a file management system and/or methodology that enables a user to view and manage both local and remote content in a single unified experience, using a small set of consistent operations. To that end, a substantial need exists for a system and/or methodology that facilitate the synchronization of metadata and files between disparate machines. More particularly, a substantial need exists for an improved on-line storage architecture.